Another TALE OF TWO HEADLINES!

Blamed by whom, pray tell? Everyone outside of Al Gore’s extended family now knows that man-made global warming is an urban legend cooked up by painty-waist eco-nuts who never got over the fact that George W. Bush was (twice!) elected President of the United States. Doesn’t matter. Combating an illusory beast like Manmade Global Warming ™ is a perfect task for this administration: it produces the necessary Green Vibrations to soothe liberal anxieties and–the really important thing–it is incredibly expensive. Indeed, Manmade Global Warming ™ is the ultimate Democratic boondoggle, potentially even more costly than nationalized health care. There may be a limit to how much you can spend on health care–granted, we don’t know what that limit is yet–but Manmade Global Warming ™? The sky’s the limit. After Nancy Pelosi gets done bankrupting your children by adding another zero or two to the TARP package, she can move on to bankrupting your grandchildren as well. (If there are any grandchildren, that is: Pelosi’s latest idea seems to be that, babies are a dispensable and expensive luxury: “the family planning services reduce cost,” she said. “They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now [and] contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”)

If only one had a safe spot from which one could watch this exercise in self-righteous melodrama unfold it would be almost amusing. Alas, no such safe spot exists: we’re stuck here on planet earth. Exactly what planet the Obamas and Pelosis of the script inhabit is not yet clear.

Wow – You would think that Obama not Bush and the neocons were in charge of the economy for the past eight years. Whose policies leadus into this diaster? I guess those policies were so successful, we just need more of them – I am sure that would win at the polls

Obviously, we are in for a tough couple of years but in the end “It is the economy, stupid.”

It remains to be seen whether Obama will fail completely as a hardcore socialist Liberal or do a Bill Clinton and morph into more center and reasonable positions. We must bet on his narcissistic nature with all hope upon him not being resolute in his convictions. We must depend on Obama’s personal nature being the polar opposite of George W. Bush.

Well, whether man-made global arming is true, or whether the Earth is warming becuase of some other method, it really doesn’t matter to me. I just think it is sad that we have to legislate behavior that the auto industry should have been doing decades ago.

Business managers and investors must always worry about the decisions of politicians. This is inevitable to a certain point. However, the Obama era is now taking it to a dangerous level. One is forced to pay particular attention to the political class because increasingly they too often determine the economic winners and losers—and not the free market. This means that it may be best to embrace a “wait and see” attitude and essentially do nothing in the immediate future. Nobody is going to do much of anything if they believe the rules of the game can arbitrarily change at any moment.

Make no mistake, this policy will create boutique gasoline formulas for the refineries to produce, and this will exert upward pressure on gasoline prices. Of course, this is what these enviros want. Plus, Americans won’t even blame high gasoline prices on government regulations. Win, win for the enviros. Obamanation!

Roger, The wronest thing I have seen you write. I was going to say “the wrongest thing you have written”, but how would I know.

Here is why:

Fuel effiency make the economy stronger. How do I know? Because if it didn’t we could make our ecomomy stronger by buying gas and just burning it. (Also fuel would be free.)

Increasing fuel efficiency improves national security. I would have guessed that you would agree with action that improves national security, but there seems to be a “unless President Obama does it” caveat in your support of America.

Lastly, increasing fuel efficency reduces CO2 emmissions which, the science tells us (at least the peer reveiwed learned journal varuiety of science), is probably a very good idea and long overdue.

Again lastly. He said he would do it. He won the election. Now he’s doing it.

So thats economics, national security, environment and political honesty, all pointing to the fact that in this instance President Barak Hussein Obama has done the right thing.

no suprise here. the people that voted for him knew what they were getting those that didnt to bad! change my friends in the end its not good change but its change. next move
is to bring up fairness doctrine. why do you thing he brouhgt up rush. Good by america sad
but big mac would be just as bad. elections have drawbacks

While “green” energy like wind and solar are a great idea, the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun only shines, in my part of the country anyway, when I don’t need to turn on the lights. With president Zerro and his sidekick Biden saying there will be no new coal fired or nuclear plants on their watch, what good are part time power sources.
It’s all a moat point anyway as long as regulations require vehicals to use so much less fuel and will be so expensive fewer of them will be on the roads (new public works roads) using fuel. Job losses are shuting down factories and stores, saving energy. Foreclosures are leaving houses not needing energy, their former inhabitants moving back in with mom and dad saving even more. So, Mr. O, just add a few more rolls of red tape to businesses and we won’t have to spend all that money on power sources that cost double our good old pentiful coal and Alaskan oil.

Yeah right. This is one of those silly canards that gets repeated so often it’s becoming a “truth” even though it’s demonstrably false. There are several reasons for this.

If we *could* increase fuel efficiency by a factor of say 5 or 10, it might have *some* effect on our fuel consumption. In actual point of fact, if Obama does increase these standards, it will probably only be an increase of a few miles per gallon per car. That wouldn’t result in a decrease in fuel consumption, because when driving gets slightly cheaper, more people drive more cars further, and make up the difference. This is a cosmetic change that the environmental lobby has been demanding for years because it means the government is “doing something” even if what they’re doing is meaningless and ineffective.

The next part of the statement is particularly silly. The idea that if we could reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, that would solve our problems with the Middle East, has been going around for decades, and it’s as silly now as when it was first articulated. In addition to the obvious contradictions in the argument (Afghanistan has no oil, and we have as much problem with radical elements there as anywhere else), there’s the specter of energy independence. Imagine a meeting between American leaders and the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, where we announce our freedom from their oil.

U.S.: “We’ve discovered new technology that gives us energy independence. We no longer need your oil. Since you’ve invested none of the money we’ve spent in your country on infrastructure to manufacture anything in the absence of the oil, your country will dissolve into chaos in a few short years, and you folks personally will probably be living in exile on the Riviera soon. The economy of your nation will fall back into the dark ages, and probably never recover.”

Royal Family: “Oh good. We’ve been burdened by this oil for decades, and don’t really like being an advanced nation anyway. I hear the Riviera is nice this time of year.”

The left, led by Obama, will do what leftists always do, wreck everything they touch and then have the audacity to blame someone else for it. Voters won’t be fooled. What is happening here is that a new generation of Americans are learning some of the same lessons that another generation of Americans learned under Carter.

In the long run, common sense and honesty will win out…until another generation has to learn things the hard way.

Mr. Hurley,
Under which administrations did the following regs/rules pass?:
1. CRA
2. Revocation of the Glass-Steagal Act (removed the “wall” between traditional banking/lending and investment banking/securitization)
3. Original Founding of Fannie Mae

The above three are at the epicenter of the stitshorm we are in currently. Keep in mind I am not absolving any Elephants – they have certainly aided and abetted this Mother of ALL Ponzi schemes. But you seem to think it was all milk and honey pre-2000. Oftentimes, just like your deviant worldview, it takes years of percolating before it comes to the surface and negatively affects everything.

“Fuel effiency make the economy stronger. How do I know? Because if it didn’t we could make our ecomomy stronger by buying gas and just burning it. (Also fuel would be free.)”

You haven’t really established how buying a certain amount of gas affects the economy. And how is fuel “free”?

Sure, Obama’s reversed Bush’s environmental stance, but most of his answers to the economic crisis is right out of George Bush’s playbook (and for that matter, John Mccain, who was a fan of cap and trade), which is to spend our way. George Bush proposed the bailout, and Obama went happily along with it.

In their big government agendas, the repulicans and democrats are hardly distinguishable. The democrats voted for the very deregulation they blame everything on, saw nothing wrong with the housing market, and played buddies with their republicans in spending out of their heads.

To be honest, I’d love to have a real, honest-to-gosh fuel solution other than oil. Some people are leaning towards natural gas.

I’m sick in my heart that we’ve made these Saudi a**holes rich beyond belief and don’t preach at me that these mofos aren’t biting the hand. Oil money is behind a lot of the muslim terrorist mess. Funding the whack-jobs that want nothing more than to see our downfall gives me a bad feeling, a REALLY bad feeling.

If our dollar fails, the world will follow. We ain’t the supa-powwa for no reason. Bring down the big guy and the little guys tumble too.

We need to strengthen the green-back, not weaken it. We need to lift up our small businesses not defeat them by over-taxation.

David, Actually, I had in mind that relying on imported energy is inherently insecure whether that energy comes from the Middle east or anywhere else in the world.

Interesting point about increasing fuel efficiency making miles cheaper to buy and that leading to us buying more of them. Does, this mean that if we wanted to reduce the amount of fuel burnt to, say, reduce CO2 emissions or reduce dependence on imports then the only way of doing this is to make fuel more expensive; to tax it more? This kind of policy has been explicitly followed in some countries and probably ‘works’. But thats a strictly boom-time policy, if ever, in America.

I don’t think that the whole increase in efficiency would be eaten though. I am pretty sure that the cost of fuel is not the only reason why people don’t like long commutes.

Roger said: “Everyone outside of Al Gore’s extended family now knows that man-made global warming is an urban legend cooked up by painty-waist eco-nuts who never got over the fact that George W. Bush was (twice!) elected President of the United States.”

You are as far out on the limb as Shirley MacLaine. Who should I believe (wrt AGW), every major professional scientific organization, or Roger Kimball? Roger, you might as well be selling pyramids made out of crystal.

As for regulations creating a poor climate for business, tell that to GWB, whose administration significantly added regulations too.

Robert Hurley, the Clinton Administration’s policy of lend anyone money got us here. If you are intelligent enough to use Nexis, you will find that President Bush and many others warned many times about the serious finance conditions at Fanny and Freddie.

North America has been under glaciers 20 times in the last epoch and nobody got their carbon taxed when those ice ages warmed up. Global warming, like the Chicken Little story about the sky falling is the perfect political scam. That is:invent a problem and promise to solve it. Chicken Little made it back to his coop but his friends were all eaten.
Politicians blended with grant hungry scientists and new data can create the perfect storm. The rally cry for politicians is, “Give us your money and we will make your world better.”
A single volcano can throw off more carbon than the entire accumulated history of mankind. Wait until they try to tax one of those babies.
No one should like toxic pollutants or toxic loans and those should be shut out immediately. It is too bad for science that they can not exist independently of politics. Realiable information would be a mainstay of civilization unless some partial person finds a way to pollute it.

“to take aggressive action to fight global warming and reduce emissions blamed for heating the earth.”

When will “mainstream” Republicans realize that the global warming nonsense is an issue that should severely hurt the Democrats? Many Americans have no idea about the devastating costs. They have been conned into thinking the price tag will only be a few pennies here and there. In no way shape or form do our fellow citizens realize that Obama’s green policies will force them to endure a Third World lifestyle. There will be hell to pay for Democratic Party elected officials once the general public learns the truth.

The problem is that Bush and company came into office with an R behind their name but they followed the same Keynesian policies that the new batch with the D behind their names want to follow. Until recently they were somewhat restrained, but no more. So with 16 years of Keynesian stimulus we have destroyed the gains made by the previous 12 years of the Reagan revolution. Now we are poised to go all out in the final test of this great experiment. I don’t think even Wyoming will be safe from the catastrophe to come.

As a lifelong conservative and free trade advocate, I find this distasteful to say. The concenses of what I read here is that to conserve on oil we need to keep the price high and have a stronger dollar. Does this mean most of you would like to see a $1 to $2 dollar fuel tax increase, like Europe, to raise the price? Then use the tax money to buy back those loans we have taken from offshore to strenghten the dollar.

Very good 16 and 22 Robert Hurley never says anything substantive. 3% of the stimulus package will be spent this year and 16% next year. We need a total tax holiday (payroll, sales, and property) for 3-6 months rather than this pork package. The citizens and private sector know better how to manage and spend money than a bunch of moronic lawyer bureaucrats. We could get caught up on our mortgage, car, credit card payments etc, if you are already in good shape take a nice vacation. These morons in DC want to tell us how to spend our money, how to live our lives, won’t let anyone fail if they deserve to, and can’t take an insult without being a crybaby. Picture Bush whine about Overbite or Madcow on LGBTNBC he was man enough not to. damn it We are sick of your crap and aren’t going to sit back and take it any more.

How about creating thousands of well paying jobs and keep half a trillion dollars in our own country by doing our own drilling for oil and natural gas. Then you need no stupid stimulus. No that makes too much sense.

“Wow – You would think that Obama not Bush and the neocons were in charge of the economy for the past eight years. Whose policies leadus into this diaster? I guess those policies were so successful, we just need more of them – I am sure that would win at the polls”

The unthinking left just spouts on with conventional wisdom like this gem without any analytical effort at all. Correlation and causation are not the same thing. When you start to pick apart the carcass that is the bank crisis, you find bad loans pushed and supported by Democratic policies. Fannie and Freddie subsidized these loans and low and behold they are ran by Democrats and protected in Congress by Democrats.

Did Bush see the coming storm and push hard enough for reform? No. Had he done that he would have been demagogued and smeared by the same people who write the drivel above.

So we will keep pouring good money into the same bad policies that got us here in the first place and the hard left myopic press will cheer it on all the way.

I guess we can expect not only the Big Three automakers to come back for more bailouts, but all of the auto industry because of the added expenses they will have as a result of President Obama reversing President Bush’s climate change policy. So, Nancy Pelosi truly believes that spending $200 million on contraceptives is the answer to saving money and over population. Even the first Woman Speaker of the House should think before she speaks.

“The concenses of what I read here is that to conserve on oil we need to keep the price high and have a stronger dollar. Does this mean most of you would like to see a $1 to $2 dollar fuel tax increase, like Europe, to raise the price? Then use the tax money to buy back those loans we have taken from offshore to strenghten the dollar.”

Northstar, that’s so sweet how you can still believe the politicians would use new tax monies to pay back debt instead of increasing spending.

Bigger cars are safer. They have more space in with to absorb impact energy (crumple zones). In car to car collisions, the bigger car has more mass, reducing the acceleration felt by the occupants.
Detroit actually makes money on bigger cars, and loses money on small cars, because of lower prices (more overseas competition) and high labor costs. Of course congress forbids making safer cars by mandating an average fuel economy standard.

The economy was doing just fine until the Democrats were elected in 2006 to a majority in congress. Then when it became obvious that Obama had 600 million in campaign funds to spend and McCain had only 85 million, anyone who could got out of the stock market. Shumer passed remarks about Indibank, causing a run. Indibank has subsequently been bought at reduced prices by a George Soros front. Loan brokers who fostered competition between banks are being forced out of business.

“Everyone outside of Al Gore’s extended family now knows that man-made global warming is an urban legend cooked up by painty-waist eco-nuts who never got over the fact that George W. Bush was (twice!) elected President of the United States.”

The trouble is that not everyone does know that. We conservatives blame the media but that’s only a part of the problem: alternative and conservative media have existed for quite some time.

The bigger problem is that you can’t teach people all throughout grade school, high school and college nothing but liberal pieties and then expect them to pay attention to conservative/alternative media. Their values are already set, and in practice to a degree.

We tend to think that dissatisfaction with President Obama and the Democrats will grow, and maybe it will, but I submit that doesn’t necessarily translate into a conservative victory later. Bitterness doesn’t open minds necessarily, it just breeds cynicism. Look at how politics in the UK “work:” Left and Right are an absolute mess, not able to rally any real support.

“Wow – You would think that Obama not Bush and the neocons were in charge of the economy for the past eight years. Whose policies leadus into this diaster?”

That is because I can actually remember Clinton standing before the nation with a big grin stating that his policies have brought home ownership to those which couldnt afford homes in the past! Your memory a little foggy Bob?

I believe letting states come up with their own crazy requirements for fuel is a mistake. I BHO wants stricter standards… make it nationwide. Not to say I agree with changing the standards. Little cars work for some people… but NOT all. There IS a need for work trucks and SUV’s believe it or not.

Yeah this is Obama’s economy now. Unfortunately he, his congress and economic advisers have never heard of an income statement. Yeah that’s right an income statement! What are they going to do to help business and individual income statements? They can reduce government regulations, or reduce the costs of labor, or ease some environmental costs, or reduce energy costs, or insurance costs, or transportation costs, or reduce taxes. Unfortunately they have no plans to do any of those things. So how is this ‘stimulus’ plan going to work? Its not!!!! Because none of them are smart enough to look at an income statement and figure it out!

“Everyone outside of Al Gore’s extended family now knows that man-made global warming is an urban legend cooked up by painty-waist eco-nuts who never got over the fact that George W. Bush was (twice!) elected President of the United States.”

That’s just not true. Scientific consensus is pretty clear that there is good evidence man-made global warming is a fact, although there are significant disagreements about exactly how bad it is or exactly how much of it is man made.

Of course scientific consensus can be wrong, but it does nobody any service to describe the scientific consensus as the beliefs of “painty-waste eco-nuts”.

I agree, ashok. Problem is, how do we ever hang on to our liberty in the face of this reality, short of revolution? This environmental religion hasn’t even been properly identified, much less removed from our government schools. The founders feared exactly this, when they put in the clause to prevent the government from establishing a national religion. So, now we have a religion based on junk science posing as something besides religion. We get arounfd the Constituton again.

I suppose some people would say that it is good that the “loyal” opposition (repugs) act out some sort of phony pseudo-patriotic crypto-fascist-religious parody in vain hopes of seeming relevant. I’m sure I offend at this very moment bringing these precious facts to way too many conservative attention deficit disordered minds, such as they are, as my ears have been on fire now for weeks, and surely they sit in some secret lair, mumbling something about perverts while making furtive hand gestures and waving a emaciated chicken bone or part, and for all I know, probably incoherently rubbing entrails on themselves whilst in Reaganistic thrall, mouthing ancient tribal curses of some long forgotten people that got here way before we did, before them damn Indians got automatic front-zees, and ruined it for everybody. And I won’t even go into the dearth of any very real chance of getting a decent egg cream or malted or that fantastic garlic sauce you get whence dining on Arab food or whatever. I mean you just don’t get that high quality garlic sauce to slather on your chicken parts or veggie substitute out here behind the orange curtain – it isn’t fair! But unfortunately, that’s the rusted and neglected plow we must use as an entrenching tool, horseless, across the blistered arid topography of our past electorate’s disengaged separation from any and all possible universes, a country in ruins, an eight year slide into impotent saber-rattling by conformist sheep, a virtual dust bowl days (daze?) of what essentially is the firmament of that which is truly the “us” of us. You get me? Fine, be that way!

Scientific consensus is pretty clear that there is good evidence man-made global warming is a fact, although there are significant disagreements about exactly how bad it is or exactly how much of it is man made.

Let me get this straight. The only thing that we’re not in agreement on is how much of man-made GW is man-made. Aside from that, we’re all in total agreement.

i have two grow kids and recently bought a 2004 chevy tahoe lt for $13k. they fill it up every morning and when we travel long distances i have a thule pak for the roof. should i buy 3 cars for all of us or just keep the one and haul everyone around as needed.???

The Conference Board, an industry group, said its sentiment index fell to 37.7 this month from an upwardly revised 38.6 in December. Wall Street analysts had forecast the index would climb to 39 from a previously reported reading of 38.

@ Jim Baker (comment #59): There’s no need for revolution. All we need to do is make sure the right ideas get in the hands of those willing to learn.

Reason Magazine or someone similarly interested should be invited to set up a kind of About.com site for those interested in economics, covering the basics and then going into issues that one will see in the news frequently. And then we have to go around and promote the heck out of that site, which should have a generic cast but be open about its partisanship, and hope it’ll appeal to a more general audience than merely the same sort of conservative.

Other things that conservatives could provide introductions to: American, World, or Biblical History (including an alternate history of the 1960′s); Medieval Philosophy (I’m sure quite a few at “First Things” would love to do this); guides to Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Again, these are all things that have more general appeal, make the Internet a smarter, better place to be, and give us credibility about other matters before we go opine.

Right now, our opinions are almost completely separate from our base of knowledge. Anyone could write the majority of op-eds at Pajamas only knowing the news. Conservatism has never been about the news, though.

Moreover, if the problem was as bad as they say there is nothing we can do about it.

That’s a subtle and underappreciated point. The law of greenhouse absorption, known as “Arrhenius’ law”, says that heat uptake is logarithmic with concentration. One unavoidable consequence of that is that if there is a problem, making 10 or 20% cuts in emissions a la Kyoto won’t make any appreciable difference. If Hansen’s ranting claims were true, nothing short of a complete cessation of fossil fuel usage would make a measurable difference.

To # 55:
Consensual science is not objective science. The laws of physics are not passed by a committee.
#65: You are on to something there. We can, as a hypothesis assume that this global recession, this business climate is a vote of “no confidence” to the politicians, the bankers, the scientists, and the press. The reaction has been an entrenchment of credit and the circulation of capital. The market demonstrates a contrarian attitude. The more that is thrown into it the worse it gets. It is no small wonder that guns and ammunition are the hottest market since last August.

“His Emptiness” and his Congressional comrades are breaking in “We The People” by throwing money around like drunken congressmen. These butt heads are like kids in a candy shop, as any parent knows.
They have the Mentally Short-sighted Media telling the people that they are doing all they can at this point; When things turn positive, as they would without their interference, they will reap all the credit. And fools will believe every word. Until there is an antidote for the kool aid that is pouring out of Washington and the Mentally Short-sighted Media, these lightening rod salesmen are going to sell a lot of lightening rods.

It doesn’t matter. Obama is not a natural-born American citizen. That makes him ineligible for the office of President and an Usurper. Any bills he signs ARE NOT LAW.
One of the Business he wants to ruin will challenge him in court. Then he will have to PROVE he is a natural born American citizen. The forged birth certificate he used in his Senate days won’t pass muster. His Signature on a Bill is no more valid then Alfred Newman’s, Alex Baldwins or Howdy Doody’s.

CAFE standards are necessary because large cars that are safe are also heavy. People want cars the will survive a crash.

More than 30 years ago using off the shelf technology (then) myself and engineers at Texas Instruments designed a system that could eliminate almost all of the onroad automobile crashes. This could be implemented for less than the cost of auto insurance, save 40,000 plus lives a year in the US alone, prevent hundred thousands of injuries and save billions of dollars. It would allow the auto makes to cut the wieght of cars substantially reduceing fuel consumption proportionately.

There is a program that would create jobs to install a system (redesign cars), save lives, reduce (not that it matters)carbon production and so on.

Of course the Auto Insurance compnies would be reduce to about 2% of their size. Most auto body repair companies would go out of business. Police staffs could be reduced. Red light camera companies would be reduntant. Traffic court judges would be unemployed. Traffic jams would disappear. Comuting times would be reduced. The savings to the economy would be in the trillions.